The latest Boeing and aerospace news, including updates about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, 747-8 and 737, Airbus A380 and A350, the anticipated Boeing 797 and Boeing jobs and layoffs

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A350 engine woes

The Wall Street Journal Tuesday has a good article about the growing spat between Airbus and GE over engines for the A350, and what it could mean for that plane.

Engine makers largely have been immune to nationalistic tendencies; GE supplied engines that made Airbus’s first plane possible 35 years ago, while Rolls invested massively through the 1970s to support models from Boeing and other U.S. plane makers.

Recently, however, links between GE and Boeing — and between Airbus and Rolls — have deepened. GE was already the exclusive supplier of engines for Boeing’s 737 single-aisle model, the best-selling jetliner in history. Boeing in 2005 selected GE over Rolls to supply engines for a planned update of its 747-8. Rolls-Royce is the exclusive engine supplier for two large versions of Airbus’s four-engine A340 model. If these relationships cement, the engine industry could fall into a longstanding U.S.-European row like the one over Boeing and Airbus. The U.S. and European Union have filed rival suits in the World Trade Organization over each other’s alleged subsidies to the plane makers.

Rolls-Royce Chief Executive Sir John Rose tried to defuse the tensions, saying in an interview that the differences simply result from a series of independent decisions. “It’s absolutely not the intent for us, Boeing or Airbus” to chose sides, Sir John said in an interview. He predicted the situation will rebalance over time.

Mr. Donnelly also said GE doesn’t want to see a split across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Boeing is happily watching the fight. “Airbus happened to build an aircraft that overlaps with the 777, where we have an exclusivity agreement with GE,” said Scott Carson, chief executive of Boeing’s commercial-aircraft division, in an interview. “Are we going to give that up? Not on your life.”

John Leahy, Airbus sales chief, talked about the GE engine dispute in an interview I did with him at the Paris Air Show. You can listen to that interview here.

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